The new book by William Croft has been awaited by the linguistic community for more than a decade, some preliminary chapters of it having appeared on the author's website as early as in 2000. The book itself stems from and hinges upon William Croft's work on argument structure and verbal semantics dating back to the early 1980s. In this book Croft summarizes his ideas about the structure of events and argument expression, which have been familiar to the linguistic audience at least since Croft 1991 and have been further developed in his later publications such as Croft 1998, and presents a fully-fledged general theory of event structure. However, the book under review is by no means just an elaboration and summary of older ideas, but contains a detailed and coherent presentation of a largely novel and promising theoretical framework coupled with an insightful analysis of a rich body of data (mainly from English), as well as an illuminating critical discussion of many of the existing approaches to event structure and argument realization. Though the conceptual basis of the book is shaped by the "functional" cognitive linguistic trend of thought (in particular, Construction Grammar), Croft bases many of his insights and proposals on the results achieved in the "formal" grammatical frameworks, and especially acknowledges the impact of Levin & Rappaport Hovav (2005) on the development of his ideas (p. xiii). The book is dedicated to the memory of Melissa Bowerman (1942-2011).

The main body of the book consists of nine chapters. In the first chapter ("Introduction", pp. 1-30), the main problems discussed in the book, viz. verbal meaning and its relation to the realization of arguments and to constructions in which verbs appear, are presented together with a brief discussion of the major types of existing approaches to semantics, among which Croft chooses the Cognitive Grammar approach with its geometrical diagrammatic representations. (Here it is worth noting that graphic representations play a very important role in the book, which necessarily means that some important aspects of Croft's theory cannot be adequately reflected in the review.) Other issues tackled in the introduction include the cognitive linguistic notions of frame and construal (the latter understood as language-particular structuring of the extralinguistic experience in semantic terms) and the problem of grammatical relations and constructions. Following his own earlier work (e.g. Croft 2001), Croft proposes to abandon the notion of "global" grammatical relations such as subject, object etc. in favour of construction-specific grammatical relations, which may be different both across languages and across different constructions within one language.

As a formal framework for the analysis of aspectual types Croft proposes a two- dimensional geometric representation involving the temporal and the qualitative axes and modeling the presence and type of qualitative change as it occurs in time. Alternative aspectual construals of predicates are represented as combinations of the aspectual contour of the predicate with the aspectual profiling imposed by the tense-aspect constructions (discussed in chapters 3 and 4). Thus the English "inceptive state" verb "see" implies both a transitory state of seeing profiled by the present tense and the punctual event of entering into this state profiled by the simple past. The two-dimensional geometric representation allows Croft to motivate his typology of aspectual types, in particular to link three types of states (acquired permanent, transitory, and point states) to three types of achievements (denoting entry into these states, viz. irreversible, reversible and cyclic achievements, respectively) and two types of activities (directed and undirected) to two types of accomplishments (incremental and non-incremental, respectively).

In chapter 3 ("Change, boundedness, and construal", pp. 70-126), various issues pertaining to the aspectual behaviour of predicates are discussed from a cognitive viewpoint. Croft starts with the discussion of the notion "directed change", linked to such well-known theoretical concepts as "incremental theme" and "scale" and forming an aspectual supercategory encompassing directed achievements, directed activities and both incremental and non-incremental accomplishments. Further Croft proposes to distinguish between two types of boundedness: qualitative boundedness (q-boundedness) and temporal boundedness (t-boundedness). Q-boundedness is inherent to the lexical semantics of the predicate and corresponds to the familiar notion of telicity as involving a "natural endpoint" and the result state of an event. T- boundedness implies the profiling of both the initial and the final endpoints of an event in a particular tense-aspect construction, without indication as to whether the result state has been achieved or even implied by the aspectual contour of the predicate. A large part of the chapter (section 3.2) is devoted to the discussion of the aspectual construals available to different English verbs, and notably of the ways lexical and encyclopedic semantics of predicates affects and constrains their aspectual potential. In this section the issue of the three existing approaches to meaning variation (polysemy, derivation and vagueness) is raised for the first time in the book (see below), and is resolved in favour of a cognitive usage-based approach in which the aspectual potential of the verb depends on "asymmetries in the frequency of use of one aspectual construal over another" (p. 91). Several mechanisms of aspectual construal are identified, viz. aspectual selection or metonymy "found with those predicates that allow either a directed achievement construal or a transitory (resulting) state construal" (p. 93), "structural schematization" found with cyclic achievements (e.g. "The light flashed") construed as undirected activities (e.g. "The light flashed for five minutes"), and "scalar adjustment" involving coarse-grained and fine-grained conceptualizations of the same event found, e.g., with disposition predicates: the activity construal in "He is being polite" is fine-grained whereas the inherent state construal in "He is polite" is coarse-grained. This latter kind of alternative construal is applicable to various aspectual types. Special subsections are devoted to an insightful analysis of auxiliary and adverbial aspectual constructions in English and to a nice account of aspectual types and aspectual construals of Russian verbs based on secondary data.

In chapter 4 ("The interaction of grammatical and lexical semantics: quantitative and qualitative analyses", pp. 127-172), Croft approaches the mutual affinities and tensions between lexical and grammatical aspect from both cross-linguistic and language-internal perspective. A re-evaluation of the well-known typology of temporal-aspectual categories of Dahl 1985 is based on the "multidimensional scaling" approach to cross-linguistic data (Croft & Poole 2008) and yields some non- trivial results, such as e.g. the existence of a typologically valid present imperfective cluster and the lack of a sharp cross-linguistic separation between perfective and perfect. With respect to the "alignment" of grammatical and lexical aspect Croft's findings more or less confirm the expectation that qualitatively unbounded situations (activities and state) would gravitate towards the imperfective while qualitatively bounded situations more often occur with the perfective aspect. The second part of the chapter is devoted to a detailed description of the basic tense-aspect constructions of English (Present Tense, Simple Past Tense, Progressive, Perfect) and "of the range of variation in aspectual potential of English verbs across" these constructions (pp. 145-164) followed by a multidimensional scaling analysis of the interaction of lexical and grammatical aspect in English and Japanese (pp. 165-171). It must be said that the role the of Japanese data in this section is not entirely clear, especially since no genuine Japanese examples are provided. The major outcome of the analysis is the spatial model of English and Japanese lexical aspect in fig. 4.4 on p. 166 showing a circular arrangement of major aspectual types from transitory states to directed achievements to directed activities to undirected activities to cyclic achievements to inactive actions and back to transitory states. Croft concludes (p. 169-171) that "the perfective/imperfective distinction in grammatical aspects corresponds to an opposition" (p. 169) of aspectual types involving, respectively, transitory states and directed achievements, on the one hand, and activities and cyclic achievements, on the other. These apparent paradoxes are resolved under the assumption (cf. chapters 2 and 3) that state and directed achievement result from different profiling of the common directed aspectual contour, and that cyclic achievement and iterative and undirected activity are different instantiations of the undirected aspectual contour.

In chapters 5 and 6 Croft switches to the construction of a force-dynamic theory of argument realization, expanding his own earlier proposals from Croft 1991 and 1998. Chapter 5 ("Toward a force-dynamic theory of argument realization", pp. 173-219) starts with a critical evaluation of some of the existing approaches to argument realization, showing empirical and conceptual problems of theories operating with semantic (thematic) roles and their hierarchies, as well as limitations of such event- based accounts as Dowty's (1991) proto-role approach. Croft's own proposal hinges upon Talmy's (1988) notion of force-dynamic relations and already mentioned Croft's earlier work. Instead of (generalized) semantic roles and their hierarchies, realization of arguments such as subject, object and different kinds of obliques is determined by the causal force-dynamic structure of the event and its profiling by the verbal predicate. The major innovation to the earlier theory proposed in the book is the integration of causal and aspectual representations of event structure in a tridimensional space where each participant in the event is associated with its own subevent characterized by an aspectual contour, and force-dynamic relations link these subevents rather than participants themselves. The unity of event is secured by the fact that its subevents, having distinct qualitative dimensions, share a common temporal axis.

Chapter 6 ("Causal structure in verbal semantics and argument realization", pp. 220- 282) elaborates on the theoretical postulates of the previous chapter and explores their consequences from a cross-linguistic perspective. A large part of the chapter is devoted to the discussion of various kinds of construal of predicate relations which either are noncausal (spatial and possessive) or show noncanonical (cyclic or branching) causal chains (mental events, reflexive, reciprocal and comitative situations). Other issues approaches in this chapter include voice, alignment (accusative, ergative and active), causative and applicative constructions, and a diachronic typology of case syncretisms elaborating on Croft's earlier distinction between two types of oblique semantic relations, which he calls antecedent (those which precede the object in the causal chain, e.g. instrument) and subsequent (those which follow the object in the causal chain, e.g. beneficiary or goal), and the generalization that case markers in languages will not conflate relations from different domains. A tentative conceptual space for participant roles uniting both causal and noncausal (spatial and intentional) relations is proposed in fig. 6.2 on p. 280.

In chapter 7 ("The interaction of aspect and causal structure in verb meaning", pp. 283-319) the force-dynamic theory of argument realization is integrated with the theory of event structure and aspect developed in chapters 2-4. The overall aspectual type of a complex event consisting of several subevents each with its own aspectual contour is determined by the following principle (p. 286): "the aspectual type of the overall event is the type of the subevent that ranks highest in the (…)" Verbal Aspectual Hierarchy : "directed change > undirected change > state." Intralinguistic and cross-linguistic differences in the lexicalization of complex events are discussed, such as the well-known distinctions between result verbs and manner verbs and between verb-framing and satellite-framing type of lexicalization, which in Croft's view are largely dependent on the presence of the directed change component in the predicate's semantics. The chapter contains many interesting observations about the behaviour of different verbs and constructions in English.

The last two chapters of the book are devoted to the interaction of verbal semantics with different constructions. In chapter 8 ("Complex predicate constructions and the semantics of simple verbs", pp. 320-357), various kinds of constructions are discussed which express complex events whose structure exceeds the limits imposed by the "constraints on the semantic structure of simple verbs -- nonbranching causal chain, temporal unity, a single directed change subevent" (p. 320). Constructions discussed include the English and Japanese resultative constructions, which receive a very detailed and insightful treatment, depictive, serial verb and converb constructions. Croft concludes the chapter by observation that simple verbs prototypically encode maximally individuated events, a notion linked to the well-established transitive action prototype (Hopper & Thompson 1980).

In chapter 9 ("Verb meaning and argument structure constructions", pp. 358-393) Croft returns to the issue of the semantic interaction of verbs and argument structure constructions and the problem of polysemy, derivation and vagueness approaches to this interaction. English ditransitive and locative constructions and verbs appearing in them are analysed in great detail. Croft argues that it is not possible to completely disentangle the semantic contributions of verbs and constructions and arrive at their "basic" or "unitary" meanings and that the contrast between a lexical rule analysis and a constructional analysis is a false dichotomy (cf. Croft 2003). Instead, Croft proposes to analyze verb-specific and narrow verb- class specific constructions fully specified for particular semantic features and draw generalizations from them. A usage-based exemplar model of verb + construction meaning is developed on pp. 383-392, which hinges upon token frequency of co- occurrences of particular verbs and constructions.

In the short "Envoy" (pp. 394-395), Croft briefly summarizes the main results of his study and urges the reader that since his argumentation was mostly based on the data from English, the generalizations proposed must be evaluated against broad cross-linguistic data.

The "Glossary of terms" (pp. 397-407) is a welcome and useful addendum.

EVALUATION

Croft's "Verbs" is undoubtedly a very important book for all linguists interested in aspect, event structure, argument realization and verb semantics. The book develops a whole new theory of event structure, comprising many of the core issues of the semantics-syntax interface, such as constraints on the lexical semantic structure of simple verbs, linguistic situation types and predicate classes, interaction between lexical and grammatical aspect and between verbal and constructional semantics, thematic roles and argument realization, voice and various complex predicates, polysemy of case markers etc. Though the argumentation is largely based on data from English, the discussion is typologically well-informed and in many aspects draws upon cross-linguistic generalizations (including those made by the author himself).

The theory presented in the book is a first coherent and all-encompassing conception of event structure and argument realization in cognitive linguistics, couched in a usage-based constructional approach to semantics and syntax and sophisticated enough to challenge the other existing theories of these phenomena, especially those developed in the "formalist" tradition. Croft can only be praised for doing justice to competing approaches and for incorporating many of their insights into his own conception instead of simply rejecting them as "aprioristic" or "reductionist." The book, in addition to presenting the author's own ideas, contains detailed and useful summaries and discussions of many of the existing approaches to the phenomena in question, where both strong and weak points of different proposals as well as their similarities and differences with Croft's own theory are highlighted. Finally, many pages of the book are devoted to a really illuminating analysis of a various English data, ranging from verbal aspect to intricacies of resultative constructions. All this makes the book a fascinating reading rewarding both theory-oriented and empirically-oriented audiences.

However, every important contribution to science has some weak points, and Croft's book is no exception. My major criticism concerns Croft's failure to take into account some of the important recent (and even not so recent) proposals in the domain of aspect and event structure, which are in some respects parallel to Croft's approach.

In his discussion of aspectual types in chapter 2, Croft ignores the approach to event types and aspectual classes proposed by Sergei Tatevosov (2002), as well as Tatevosov's critical survey of various proposals in this domain. This is indeed unfortunate, since Tatevosov has developed a cross-linguistically applicable non- aprioristic theory of aspectual types allowing to analyze data from any human language and to arrive at directly comparable results. In addition, several of Croft's "new" aspectual types, such as e.g. "inceptive states", have been already recognized by Tatevosov as "cross-linguistic actional classes" supported by data from many languages. This is also important because Croft's own approach to aspectual types does not seem to be conceptually or methodologically superior to Tatevosov's; Croft does not actually explain how his methodology of arriving at event types and aspectual classes is constrained, whether the event types and aspectual classes he postulated for English can be extended to other languages and how such an extension can be achieved in a non-circular and non-aprioristic way. This leads him to saying that "there is in fact an indefinitely large number of predicate classes each having its own unique aspectual potential or range of possible aspectual construals" (p. 57), which is not a very desirable result, since linguistic theory must instead constrain possible predicate classes, and this is precisely what Tatevosov's approach does (see especially Tatevosov 2010, where cross-linguistic hypotheses about possible aspectual classes and language-specific systems of aspectual classes are proposed).

The second recent proposal in the domain of event structure which Croft fails to take into account is the work by Gillian Ramchand (2008), which, though couched in the generative syntactic framework, is in many ways parallel to Croft's functional cognitive theory. Like Croft, Ramchand proposes an integrated theory of aspect, event structure and argument realization, where each event participant is associated with its own subevent represented as a node in the syntactic tree linked to a specific semantic interpretation; the relations between different participants and subevents of the same event in Ramchand's system are causal in nature, thus resembling Croft's force-dynamic relations. Similarly to Croft, Ramchand is concerned with the issue of what constrains the semantic potential of simple verbs and with such constructions as causative, resultative etc. A critical evaluation of Ramchand's theory and its comparison with his own would have constituted a highly relevant part of Croft's book.

The third major piece of pertinent work ignored by Croft (and, unfortunately, by many of his colleagues) belongs to the Russian linguist Elena Paducheva, who has developed a sophisticated derivational theory of event structure and aspect (basing mainly on the Russian data), in many respects similar to that of Croft's (including parallels in graphic representations of event types). The relevant publications in English include Paducheva 1995, 1997, 1998, 2003 (see http://lexicograph.ruslang.ru/03MembersPadu.htm); among the important insights made by Paducheva is the recognition of the principled correlation between predicate classes and semantic types of verbal arguments, cf. Croft's cursory remarks on p. 378 of his book.

Further, in many parts of the book Croft fails to take into account and refer to the recent important work on the problems he is dealing with. Work which should have been considered include Carlota Smith's papers on English tense and aspect, e.g. Smith 1978 and Smith 1986, in section 4.3 on the basic tense-aspect constructions in English; the major typological work (e.g., Nedjalkov ed. 2007) on reciprocals and reflexives, their semantics, polysemy, diachrony and expression across languages in section 6.2.3.2; recent insights in the semantics of comitative constructions and comitative relations by Alexandre Arkhipov (2009); recent developments in the typology of the so-called "active/stative" languages (Donohue & Wichmann eds. 2008) in section 6.3.1; recent proposals concerning transitivity such as Næss 2007 and Malchukov 2006. All these lacunae are rather unfortunate; not invalidating Croft's own proposals, they nevertheless make them weaker and less supported by the existing body of data and literature than desired.

There are not many errors and typos in the book, and I will point out only those which pertain to the data. On p. 121 the Russian verb 'be interested in' is 'interesovat'sja,' not 'interesovat,' and the alleged Russian verb grančit' 'cut, facet' does not exist. On p. 193 the notation from Wunderlich 1997 is mixed up: accusative must be specified as [+hr], not [+lr], while the ergative is assigned [+lr], not [+hr]. In the Turkish ex. (90b) on p. 267 a wrong accusative case marker appears. In the Finnish ex. 85 on p. 317 GEN instead of PRTT must appear in the glosses; in addition, the abbreviations list on pp. xvi-xvii does not contain PART and PRTT.

To conclude, the new book by William Croft, despite certain drawbacks and weaknesses, is a major contribution to linguistic theory, which should be read by all linguists interested in aspect, event structure, and argument realization, regardless of particular theoretical frameworks they adhere to. The book is rich in ideas and empirical data and is written in a persuasive and appealing fashion, making it a fascinating and smooth reading.

Peter M. Arkadiev, PhD in linguistics (2006), is a senior research fellow in the Department of Typology and Comparative Linguistics of the Institute of Slavic studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at the Centre for Linguistic Typology of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. His main interests are linguistic typology with a focus on case marking and argument structure and its formal realization, and tense- aspect-modality. He works mainly on Lithuanian and Adyghe.